She glared up at him. Anger again. Useful. “What does that mean?” she said coldly. In the light from the torches she could see his face clearly now. He regarded her with composure, but she thought she saw laughter lingering in his eyes. “What does ‘I see’ mean?” she demanded.
A brief silence. “Forgive me,” he said gravely. “Have I offended?”
“With that tone you did, yes,” she said sturdily.
“Then I shall have to chastise him for you.”
The voice was behind her, and known. She wheeled, but not before she saw ibn Khairan’s gaze shift beyond her and his expression change.
In the doorway to the infirmary Rodrigo Belmonte stood in a spill of candlelight, wearing the same overtunic and vest he’d worn to the banquet, with his sword on one hip.
“I am always being chastised by someone,” ibn Khairan complained.
Rodrigo gave a snort of amusement. “I doubt that,” he said. “But you ought to know, if you don’t already, that Mazur ben Avren’s lack of success with our doctor here has been the talk of Ragosa for months.”
“It has?” said Ammar politely.
“It has?” said Jehane in a very different tone.
“I’m afraid so,” Rodrigo replied, looking at her. He, too, was amused now, a certain wryness to the expression beneath the full moustache. “I must confess I’ve made a sum of money in this matter.”
“You’ve been wagering on me?” Jehane heard her voice swirling upwards.
“I have great confidence in all the members of my company,” Rod-rigo said.
“I am not a member of your company!”
“I continue to live in hope,” he murmured blandly.
Behind her, ibn Khairan laughed aloud. She wheeled on him. He held up his hands in a quick, warding gesture. Jehane was silent, speechless in fact. And then, resisting all the way, she felt her own amusement welling up. She began to laugh, helplessly.
She leaned in the doorway, wiping at her eyes, looking from one man to the other. From within the infirmary the two night attendants looked disapprovingly towards the three of them. Jehane, who had to give the attendants firm instructions in a moment, struggled for composure.
“She can’t join us,” said Ammar ibn Khairan. He had moved into the entranceway, out of the cutting wind. “Ben Avren will never let her leave the city.”
“Us?” said Rodrigo.
“Leave the city?” said Jehane, in the same moment.
The handsome, smooth-shaven face turned from one of them to the other. He took his time before speaking.
“Some things do seem obvious,” said ibn Khairan, looking at the Valledan. “King Badir will be exceedingly nervous about having both of us in Ragosa this winter without gainful activity. We will be sent somewhere. Together. I’ll place a wager on that. And given what you have just told me about the chancellor’s entirely understandable interest in our splendid physician he is not going to permit her to leave Fezana with two such irresponsible men.”
“I am not an irresponsible man,” said Rodrigo Belmonte indignantly.
“I beg to dissent,” Ammar said calmly. “Jehane told me that you caused a Batiaran mercenary—a fine man, a doughty soldier—to forget his own mother’s name this afternoon! Deeply irresponsible, I call that.”
“His mother’s?” Rodrigo exclaimed. “Not his father’s? If it was his father’s name—”
“You could understand it. I know,” said Jehane. “The high lord ibn Khairan has already made that feeble jest. Among other things the two of you appear to share the same childish humor.”
“Other things? What other things? I may now be offended.” Ibn Khairan’s expression belied the words. He didn’t look weary or unfocused any more, she noted. The physician in her was pleased with that. She chose to ignore the question.
“I am the one offended, remember? And you haven’t apologized yet. Nor have you,” she said, turning upon Belmonte. “Wagering on my conduct! And how dare you assume that the chancellor of Ragosa—or anyone else—dictates where and when I travel?”
“Good!” said Rodrigo. “I have been waiting a long time to hear you say that! A winter campaign will be an excellent trial for all of us.”
“I didn’t say—”
“Won’t you come?” he said. “Jesting aside, Jehane, I badly need a good doctor, and I still remember something you said, about working among Esperañans. Will you give us a chance to prove a point about that?”
Jehane remembered it too. She remembered that night extremely well. Even the sun goes down, my lady. She turned her mind from that thought.
“What?” she said, sardonically. “Are there no pilgrims heading to blessed Queen Vasca’s Isle this year?”
“Not from my company,” said Rodrigo quietly.
There was a silence. He had a way of stilling you, she thought.
“You might also consider that a campaign outside the city would give you a respite from ben Avren’s attentions,” said ibn Khairan, a little too casually.
She spun to glare at him. His hands came up again, defensively. “Assuming, of course, you want a respite,” he added quickly. “He’s a remarkable man. A poet, a chancellor, a genuine scholar. Prince of the Kindath. Your mother would be proud.”
“If I let him bed me?” she asked sweetly.
“Well no, not that, I suppose. I was thinking of something more formal, of course. Something . . .”
He stopped, having registered the look in her eyes. His hands came up for a third time, as if to block an assault. His rings glittered.
Jehane glared at him, her own fingers curled into fists. The problem was, she kept wanting to laugh, which made it difficult to cling to outrage. “You are in grave trouble if you happen to get sick on this campaign,” she said grimly. “Did no one ever warn you not to offend your doctor?”
“Many people, many times,” Ammar admitted ruefully. “I’m just not a responsible man, I fear.”
“I am,” said Rodrigo cheerfully. “Ask anyone!”
“Only,” she snapped over her shoulder, “because you’re terrified of your wife. You told me so!”
Ibn Khairan laughed. A moment later, so did Belmonte, his color high. Jehane crossed her arms, refusing to smile, scowling at both of them.
She felt extraordinarily happy, though.
The temple bells chimed, beyond the rooftops south of them, bright and clear in the cold night, to awaken the devout for prayer.
“Go home,” said Jehane to both men, looking into the infirmary. “I have patients to check on.”
They glanced at each other.
“And leave you here alone? Would your mother approve?” asked ibn Khairan.
“My father would,” Jehane said crisply. “This is a hospital. I am a doctor.”
That sobered them. Ibn Khairan bowed, and Belmonte did the same. They left, walking together. She watched them go, standing in the doorway until they were swallowed up by the night. She stood for another moment there, staring at the darkness before going into the infirmary.
The Karcher with the fractured arm still slept. It was what he needed. She had given him absinthe for pain, and her father’s mixture to help him rest.
She woke the other man gently, with the attendants on either side of his pallet. Sometimes they were violent when awakened. These were fighting men. The Batiaran knew her, though, which was good. She had them hold up a torch for her and she looked at his eyes: cloudy still, but better than before and he followed her finger when she moved it before his face. She put a hand behind his head and helped him drink: cloves, myrrh and aloes, for what had to be a brutal headache.
She changed the dressing on his wound, then withdrew to the other side of the room while the attendants helped him pass water into a beaker for her. She poured the urine into her father’s flask and studied it against the candlelight. The top layer, which told of the head, was mostly clear now. He was going to be all right. She told him as much, speaking in his own language. He sank back into slumber.
Just before she dropped off, a thought came to her: she had, it seemed, just agreed to leave the comforts of city and court to go out on a winter campaign—wherever that expedition turned out to be going. She hadn’t even asked them. Nobody went on winter campaigns.
“You idiot,” she murmured aloud, aware that she was smiling in the darkness.
In the morning the Batiaran remembered his mother, knew where he was, the day of the week and the sub-commanders of his company. When she asked, a trifle unwisely, about his father’s name, he flushed a vivid crimson.
Jehane took pains to show no reaction at all, of course. She swore a silent oath to herself, on the spot, in the name of Galinus, father of all physicians, that she would die before telling Ammar ibn Khairan or Rodrigo Belmonte about this.
That oath, at least, she kept.
Nine
The wind was north. Yazir could taste salt in the air, though they were half a day’s ride across the Majriti sands from the sea. It was cold.
Behind him he could hear the flapping of the tents as the wind caught and tugged at them. They had come this far north and set up a camp to meet with their visitor.
On the coast, out of sight beyond the high, shifting dunes, lay the new port of Abeneven, whose walls offered shelter from the wind. Yazir ibn Q’arif would rather be dead and with Ashar among the stars than winter in a city. He shrugged deeper into his cloak. He looked up at the sky. The sun, no menace now at the brink of winter so far to the north, was a pale disk in a sky of racing clouds. There was a little time yet before the third summons to prayer. They could continue this discussion.
No one had said a word, however, for some time. Their visitor was clearly unsettled by that. This was good, on the whole; unsettled men, in Yazir’s experience, revealed more of themselves.
Yazir looked over and saw that his brother had pulled down the veil that covered the lower half of his face. He was breaking beetle shells and sucking at the juices inside. An old habit. His teeth were badly stained by it. Their guest had already declined the offered dish. This, of course, was an insult, but Yazir had gained some insight into the manners of their brethren across the straits in Al-Rassan, and was not unduly perturbed. Ghalib, his brother, was a more impetuous man, and Yazir could see him dealing with anger. The visitor would not be aware of this, of course. Their guest, miserably cold, and obviously unhappy with the smell and feel of the camel hair cloak they had presented him as a gift, sat uncomfortably on Yazir’s meeting blanket and sniffled.
He was ill, he had told them. He talked a great deal, their visitor. The long journey to Abirab and then along the coast to this wintering place of the Muwardi leaders had afflicted him with an ailment of the head and chest, he had explained. He was shivering like a girl. Ghalib’s contempt was obvious to Yazir, but this man from across the straits would not see that either, even with Ghalib’s veil lowered.
Yazir had long ago realized—and had tried to make his brother understand—that the softness of life in Al-Rassan had not only turned the men there into infidels, it had also made them very nearly women. Less than women, in fact. Not one of Yazir’s wives would have been half so pathetic as this Prince Hazem of Cartada, his nose dripping like a child’s in the face of a little wind.
And this young man, lamentably, was one of the devout ones. One of the true, pious followers of Ashar in Al-Rassan. Yazir was forced to keep reminding himself of that. The man had been corresponding with them for some time. Now he had come himself to the Majriti, a long way in a difficult season, to speak his plea to the two leaders of the Muwardis, here on a blanket before flapping tents in the vast and empty desert. He had probably expected to meet them in Abirab, or Abeneven at worst, Yazir thought. Cities and houses were what the soft men of Al-Rassan knew. Beds with scented pillows, cushions to recline upon. Flowers and trees and green grass, with more water than any man could use in his lifetime. Forbidden wine and naked dancers and painted Jaddite women. Arrogant Kindath merchants exploiting the faithful and worshipping their female moons instead of Ashar’s holy stars. A world where the bells summoning to prayer were occasion for a cursory nod in the direction of a temple, if that much.
Yazir dreamed at night of fire. A great burning in Al-Rassan and north of it, among the kingdoms of Esperaña, where they worshipped the killing sun in mockery of the Star-born children of the desert. He dreamed of a purging inferno that would leave the green, seductive land scorched back towards sand but pure again, ready for rebirth. A place where the holy stars might shine cleanly down and not avert their light in horror from what men did below in the cesspools of their cities.
He was a cautious man, though, Yazir ibn Q’arif of the Zuhrite tribe. Even before the foul murder of the last khalif in Silvenes wadjis had been coming across the straits to him and his brother, year after year, beseeching that the tribes sweep north across the water to a burning of infidels.
Yazir didn’t like boats; he didn’t like water. He and Ghalib had more than enough on their hands controlling the desert tribes. He had elected to roll small dice only behind his veil—akin to a cautious play in the ancient bone game of the desert—and had allowed some of his soldiers to go north as mercenaries. Not to serve the wadjis either, but the very kings they opposed. The petty-kings of Al-Rassan had money, and paid it for good soldiers. Money was useful; it bought food from north and east in hard seasons, it hired masons and shipbuilders—men Yazir had reluctantly come to realize he needed, if the Muwardis were to have any more permanence than the drifting sands.
Information was useful, too. His soldiers sent home all their wages, and with these sums came tidings of affairs in Al-Rassan. Yazir and Ghalib knew a great deal. Some of it was comprehensible, some was not. They learned that there were courtyards within the palaces of the kings, and even in the public squares of cities, where water was permitted to burst freely from pipes through the mouths of sculpted animals—and then to run away again, unused. This was almost impossible to credit, but the tale had been reported too many times not to be true.
One report—this one a fable, obviously—even had it that in Ragosa, where a Kindath sorcerer had bewitched the feeble king, a river ran through the palace. It was said that there was a waterfall in the sorcerer’s bedchamber, where the Kindath fiend bedded helpless Asharite women, ripping their maidenheads and laughing at his power over the Star-born.
Yazir stirred restlessly within his cloak; the image filled him with a heavy rage. Ghalib finished cracking beetles, pushed the earthenware dish away, pulled up his veil and mumbled something under his breath.
“I’m sorry?” the Cartadan prince said, leaping at the sound. He sniffled. “My ears. I’m sorry. I failed to hear. Excellence?”
Ghalib looked at Yazir. It was increasingly evident that he wanted to kill this man. That was understandable, but it remained a bad idea, in Yazir’s view. He was the older brother. Ghalib would follow him, in most things. He narrowed his eyes in warning. Their visitor missed this of course; he missed everything.
On the other hand, Yazir abruptly reminded himself, Ashar had taught that charity towards the devout was the highest deed of earthly piety, short of dying in a holy war, and this man—this Hazem ibn Almalik—was as close to being truly devout as any prince of Al-Rassan had been in a long time. He was here, after all. He had come to them. They had to take note of that. If only he wasn’t such a sorry, emasculated excuse for a man.
“Nothing,” Yazir grunted.
“What? I beg—”
“My brother said nothing. Do not trouble yourself so.” He tried to say it kindly. Kindness did not come naturally to him. Neither did patience, though that he had been at pains to teach himself over the years.
His world was different now from when he and Ghalib had led the Zuhrites out of the west and swept all the other tribes before them, leaving the sands blood-red where they passed. More than twenty years ago that was. They had been young men. The khalif in Silvenes had sent them gifts. Then the next khalif, and the next, until the last one was slain.
There was still blood on the sands, most years. The tribes of the desert had never taken easily to authority. Twenty years was a very long time to have held sway. Long enough even to build two cities on the coast, with shipyards now and warehouses, and three more cities inland, with markets, where the gold of the south could be assembled and dispersed in the long caravans. Yazir hated settlements, but they mattered. They were marks of endurance on the shifting face of the desert. They were a beginning to something larger.
The next stage of permanence for the Muwardis, though, lay beyond the sands. That much was becoming more and more clear to Yazir as the seasons and the stars turned.
Ghalib flatly rejected the very thought of leaving the desert life he knew, but not the idea of a holy war across the straits. That idea he liked. Ghalib was good at killing people. He was not a man well-suited to leading the tribes in peacetime, or to building things that might remain after him, for his sons and his sons’ sons. Yazir, who had come out of the west those long years ago with a string of camels and a sword, with five thousand warriors and a bright, hard vision of Ashar, was trying to become such a man.
Ibn Rashid, the ascetic, the wadji who had come to the westernmost Zuhrite tribes bearing the teachings of Ashar from the so-called homelands none of the Muwardis had ever seen, would have approved, Yazir knew that much.
The wadji, gaunt and tall, with his unkempt white beard and hair and his black eyes that read souls, had settled with six disciples in a cluster of tents among the wildest people of the desert. Yazir and his brother, the sons of the Zuhrite chieftain, had come one day to laugh at this new, harmless madman in his settlement, where he preached the visions of another madman in another desert in a far land named Soriyya.
The Lions of Al-Rassan Page 24